The device comprises a GPS unit for receiving the car's position, an RF transmitter for relaying your location to the interested authority (i.e., the FBI), and a set of sweet D-cell batteries that power the whole enchilada. But we didn't stop there, of course. Read on to find out exactly what components make this secretive device tick.

Disclaimer: We love the FBI. We've worked with them on several occasions to fight crime and locate criminals. We've helped them with instructions on gaining entry into certain devices. We have nothing against them, and we hope they don't come after us for publishing this teardown.

We finally have one of these on the teardown table! Being in its presence, we can almost feel our civil liberties being flushed down the toilet.

Before we whip out the blowtorches and jackhammers, here's a look at the entire tracking system.

Clockwise from the top, the system consists of:

Battery pack

GPS antenna

Transmitter/receiver unit

Magnetic mounting bracket

The components of the system are all attached to the tracked vehicle with extremely powerful magnets. Some were so stubbornly attached that they ripped out of the mounting brackets to forever remain stuck on the undercarriage of the host vehicle.

A few screws are all that remain between us and the innards of this invasive device.

It seems that this rear cover is simply a method to connect the module to power. Presumably, power sources (batteries) of different shapes/sizes/capacities can be connected through the same plate to make the tracking device more universally installable.

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The FBI really did not want anyone tampering with the innards of their tracking devices. The screws were coated with so much threadlocker that we had to break out the power drill and eliminate the screw heads.

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The module providing the GPS signal processing on this device is a µ-blox GPS-MS1 that's sort of ancient in the realm of modern electronics.

It was released June 29, 1999!

It features an astonishing 0.125 MB of SRAM and 1 MB of flash memory.

The backup battery on its reverse side powers a real time clock and maintains the GPS receiver's SRAM to allow for a much faster connection time to the satellites, called a warm start. This is usually used in conjunction with a circuit to power down most of the GPS, providing a much longer battery life.

The slightly imperfect alignment of the SMD components on the board indicates that the FBI hand-soldered them to the board and tailored the component choices to their specifications.

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The "backup battery" on the back of the GPS module looks to me like a super-capacitor. These are usually used on GPS's to maintain the contents of the SRAM when the unit is powered down. Maintaining the SRAM means that the GPS gets a lock much faster (See GPS warm-start) when powered back up again. This combined with a power gating circuit will mean that the device can last much longer.

That might be an ancient GPS but if I'm not mistaken, the FBI will have access to 100% accurate GPS signals (rather than the - within 300 metres that we lowly mortals get) so that's one handy piece of kit...